


Bodice Ripper

by romanticalgirl



Category: Castle
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-14
Updated: 2013-04-14
Packaged: 2017-12-08 12:45:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/761455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/romanticalgirl/pseuds/romanticalgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just like a paperback novel, the kind the drugstores sell</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bodice Ripper

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [](http://inlovewithnight.livejournal.com/profile)[**inlovewithnight**](http://inlovewithnight.livejournal.com/) for hand-holding. Written for the [](http://smallfandomfest.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://smallfandomfest.livejournal.com/)**smallfandomfest** challenge for the prompt: Castle/Beckett - romance novel
> 
> Originally posted 5-26-09

“My God.”

“What?” Esposito looked up from his computer at Kate’s exclamation. “You find something?”

“Yeah, you could say that.” Beckett shook her head and waved him over. “Look at this.”

Esposito and Ryan both crowded around the back of her desk, glancing at the computer screen from over her shoulders. They both whistled under their breath in unison and Kate was about to say something when she felt hands curve over the back of her seat and brush along her spine. “What are we looking at?”

“Castle.” She shut down the screen as quickly as she could, but she could tell when she turned around that she hadn’t been fast enough. “You’re…here.”

“Yeah. I work here. Sort of. What was that?”

“What was what?”

“That.”

“It’s a computer.”

“No.” He reached past her and clicked at a few keys, bringing the window back up. “That.”

“Ah. That. It’s…well. It’s a website.”

“ _Undercover Lovers_.” Castle nodded. “Catchy name.” He leaned in over Kate’s shoulder, his hand resting on her desk so that his chest rested against her shoulder. “ _Solve the mystery of the men behind the crimes…of passion_.”

“It’s about…”

“Mystery writers. I know.” He pulled back and sank into a chair, facing Kate and refusing to look away. “Being, as I am, a mystery writer.”

Esposito shot Ryan a glance and they backed toward their desks, leaving the danger zone, though she knew they were still listening. “Look, Castle, I was just…”

“Everyone has secrets, Kate.” She shivered at his voice, the same way she shivered when she imagined him reading from his novels, voice low and gravelly during the sex scenes. “You didn’t think I was exempt, did you?”

“I wasn’t _looking_ for secrets.”

“No?” He raised an eyebrow and tapped her desk twice with his finger. “You just happened across the website the month that I’m profiled on it?”

“You’re being profiled?” Her voice sounded unconvincing, even to herself. “I hadn’t noticed.”

“Yes, I can see how you’d miss that picture of me. Perhaps you mistook me for someone else.”

Kate looked at the website again and felt a flush threatening, the very large and unmistakable picture of Castle grinning at her in his typical smug manner. “Well…So. We have a case.”

“Why?”

“Because someone committed a murder?” She closed down the website with a definitive click of the mouse. “And I’m not sure if you know this, Castle, but solving crimes is what we do.”

“What _we_ do?”

Beckett grabbed her coat. “Shut up.”

**

“It won’t tell you anything I wouldn’t tell you myself.” She could tell he wasn’t not whole-heartedly into the conversation by the way he stared at his notebook, tapping it with the tip of his pencil. “You just have to ask.”

“Asking you is like riding a merry-go-round. You get dizzy from spinning in circles.” Kate gripped the steering wheel tighter as she wove through traffic. “I don’t think you like straight answers.”

“I’m a mystery writer. Of course I don’t like straight answers.” He laughed softly and set his notebook on his thigh, turning his head to look at her. “What is it, Kate? If you really want to know something, I’ll tell you.”

“Do you love her? Alexis’s mom?”

“I love both my ex-wives in the way that you love a child. You can’t help but love them, but sometimes you want to kill them. Amusingly, I never feel that way about my _child_.” He raised an eyebrow. “Anything else?”

“Is it true? What it said on the site?”

“Which part? That I’m a butch, virile, hunk of man? That I’m one of the hottest catches in New York?”

“That you write romance novels.”

“Ah.” He stopped talking and turned his gaze back to the windshield. “Technically, I don’t _write_ romance novels.”

“You don’t?” She’s surprised by the rush of relief that hits her.

“But I used to.”

“Oh.” The relief dissipated and she frowned at her hands. “You did?”

“Romance is one of the easiest genres to break into, and so when I started out and couldn’t get anyone to read my Derek Storm manuscript, I wrote a romance novel or two.”

“But they’re so…”

“So what? Popular? In demand?”

“Misogynistic.”

“You say that about my mysteries.”

“Yes, but the romance novels are worse. Some simpering young virgin who falls in love with the much older man next door who takes her virginity before they have some contrived misunderstanding and she leaves town, only to come back a smart and successful woman who immediately falls back into her old patterns when confronted with said older man who now assumes she’s some jezebel, even though she’s never had a lover other than him.”

“Wow. You know the genre pretty well.”

“It’s warped.”

“And misogynistic.”

“I already said that.” She blew out a frustrated breath. “How could you perpetuate those stereotypes, Castle?”

“Hold on. Just wait a second. What makes you so sure I did? Not everything is like that these days. Some of those romances are smut with prettier words. Maybe I wrote one of those.”

“Is that supposed to make it _better_?”

“Why are you so pissed off at me?” He turned in his seat and looked at her, tilting his head. “I was trying to make a living. I’m sorry that I disappointed you and didn’t make it as a best-selling author right out of the gate.”

“What name?”

“What name what?”

“What _name_ , Castle? What name did you write under?”

“Regina Palais.”

“Damn it.” Kate slammed her hand into the steering wheel and glared at him.

“ _What_?”

“Nothing.”

“Do you…own Regina Palais’s books, Beckett?”

“No.” She could feel the flush coming back again. “I do not.”

“I could get you a copy of them. Autographed even.” He smiled and she wanted to smack him, to wipe that satisfied grin off his face. “They were just reprinted in hardcover even.”

She jerked the car to the curb and slammed on the brakes. “We have a murder to solve.”

“You’re _furious_ that I wrote romance novels.”

“No, Castle.” She slammed the car door behind her and glared at him over the roof. “I’m furious that you _stopped_ , because if you still wrote the damn things, then I wouldn’t have to put up with you.”

“You never know, Beckett. Maybe you would.” He let her go first into the building, following closely behind her. “And just think about how much fun our research would be then.”  



End file.
